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6000025 No.6000025 [Reply] [Original]

Whereas most books criticize the organizing structure of society, it is my belief that Pynchon not only criticizes this and morality and mortality, but he also criticizes other naturally occurring things: sexually satirizing nature, criticizing Gravity's negative influence on rocket 00001s trajectory.

Do you think this is tenable? Do you think this sort of interpretation holds any water when in other sections of the book, Pynchon quotes Rilke and basically interprets Nature as this beautiful abstraction we are moving out of.

>> No.6000081

>The Porn Parabola
>Banana's Bend
>Cinephile's Curves
>Incestuous Incline
>Cuckold's Concavity

>> No.6000319

I'll give you a bump

>> No.6000424

Your analysis looks a bit similar to mine.

It's right in the beginning when Pirate thinks about what really happens during Brennschluss, when even the germans lose control over the rocket and nobody knows exactly what will happen. The Rocket also transcends causality (the blow before the boom) so I think Pynchon is implying that the Rocket acquires free will.

Apply this to all inanimate objects and abstract concepts in the book (Imipolex G, schwartzgerät, marxism, genocide, nature itself) you see clear similarities between how the world around us as acts and how the novels intricate conspiracies act. Turn this around and we are left wondering what free will, control and causality really is in an interconnected magamachine, or if it is only perceived as one, when everything is actually completely disjointed.

I haven't really sorted out all my thoughts about this since I discover new details everytime I read the book that I'm not sure what to make of. Most recently I made the connection with the Roger/Jessica chapter where the narrator explains that war fragmentizes and disassociates, and yet there is a single man who believes himself to be WW2 and his fever shot up during the Invasion of Normandy.

Sorry if I'm hard to follow, this is just what I had in my head at the moment.

>> No.6003162

>actual discussion of GR
... will come back whenwith something to contribute, but bump

>> No.6003173

>>6000081
>Bane's Euler–Bernoulli Beam

>> No.6003447

So, what did you guys get out of the guy in a diver's suit trying to get struck by lightening?

Heart-beat theory hold up?

>> No.6003562

>>6003447
I think the mountain top references a heart beat, yes, but that segment doesn't stop there. I'd be curious if anyone has a clue what the nickel magnate at the BBQ party in California has to do with any of that (or anything for that matter).

>> No.6003689

>>6003562
I don't even remember a nickel-magnate.

>> No.6005442

>>6003689
Read the part about the polish undertaker again, I think I've read that particular page more times than any other in that book. It is absolutely impossible to figure out wtf is going on.

>> No.6006069

I've just started this book ~100 pages in, and it's all relatively straightforward so far. This scares me, is it going to get a whole lot harder soon?

>> No.6007663

>>6006069
If you think below the zero is straightforward then you're doing pretty good.

>> No.6007744

>>6007663

I definitely would never describe it as straightforward. However, it confuses me that people tend to describe the first section as being particularly difficult or cryptic... as long as you read it slowly and mind for random transitions in time and place, it's fairly easy to understand the plot.

>> No.6007772

>>6000025
>>6000424
A number of scholars interpret that duality in the rocket as the possibility of science and reason to set us free and take us to a new plane like the moon, or just speed up the process of humanity destroying one another.

>> No.6008229

>>6006069
I'm almost at 300. Most of it is straight forward I think, but there are some passages I can't make sense of.

My biggest fear of thinking that I understanding most of it this far is that I might be missing something huge without even realizing. Also, that I'll lose track of how things connect or relate to one another.

>> No.6008246

>>6007772
I forget where I heard it, but that description sounds similar to something I heard about fire. It is a useful tool utilized by man to bring him out of the darkness, but at the same time has the power to consume and destroy him.

Similar thoughts.

>> No.6008252

>>6008229
I felt like you man and let me tell you that if you're anything like me you'll finish this book and find you are absolutely spot on in this post. I really need to read it again, sans marijuana. Although, I did retain quite a bit.

>> No.6008269

>>6008252
I've hardly ever felt that I had to re-read a book. But this one is definitely going to call for another go through. I'll probably try to do some research on it before the second time though so I could get further past just a surface level read.

>> No.6008502

>>6008229
>My biggest fear of thinking that I understanding most of it this far is that I might be missing something huge without even realizing. Also, that I'll lose track of how things connect or relate to one another.

Don't fear that, that's what makes to book so good on a reread.

>> No.6009889

Okay, question. If V2's go off like a daily thing throughout Beyond The Zero, why does the one in the beginning elicit an evacuation? And why can it be heard before detonating? It's almost like the rocket in the introduction is a nuclear warhead or something, but I figure it's supposed to be a V2. Also, it seemed to be Prentice's dream, but I'm figuring with his ability to read people's dream and stuff that it might tie in later or be a manifestation of something real and not just a nightmare. I'm still early yet, so maybe this will be better explained or simply fall into place later, but it just seemed odd.

>> No.6009903

Also, this Schwarzkommando thing is confusing me. Just to clarify; The Nazis have an African special force or something involved with the rocket project, and the BBC guy is just trying to scare the Nazis into thinking the blacks will rebel with radio propoganda, right? Because that seems very simplistic and quite useless for all it's build up as Operation Black Wing. But maybe that was the point and it was a joke that just didn't register with me. Or perhaps I've misinterpreted it altogether.

>> No.6009976

>>6000424
>I think Pynchon is implying that the Rocket acquires free will.
This is interesting if you think about what the letter V means V. (the book), which I understood to be an intersection between the inanimate and animate world, with Venus being born from sea foam and Victoria replacing her body parts with objects, we already know they take part in the same universe as Mondaugen appears in both novels.

Just a thought that occurred, I'm only half way through GR.

>> No.6009989

>>6009976
That heavily reminds me of Mason&Dixon: with the duck, which goes even further

>> No.6010286

>>6009903
To me it seems another allegory to the aspect of the rocket most stressed, the sound/realisation arriving after the rocket. The real schwarzkommando is presented to us as if borne out of the propaganda, it was a British conception before it became a German reality.

>>6000424
I don't see everything as completely disjointed. In fact, everything seems pretty nicely connected with the rocket itself being the only aspect of the story that transcends determinacy.

>One reason we grew so close to the Rocket, I think, was this sharp awareness of how contingent, like ourselves, the Aggregat 4 could be--how at the mercy of small things...dust that gets in a timer and breaks electrical contact...a film of grease you can't even see, oil from a touch of human fingers, left inside a liquid-oxygen valve, flaring up as soon as the stuff hits and setting the whole thing off--I've seen that happen...rain that swells the bushings in the servos or leaks into a switch: corrosion, a short, a signal grounded out, Brenschluss too soon, and what was alive is only an Aggregate again, an Aggregat of pieces of dead matter, no longer anything that can move, or that has a Destiny with a shape

Compare the Rocket's ability to subvert destiny with the fact that we're told that the Treaty of Rapallo was signed to open up communication lines to make it possible for Enzian and Tchitcherine to one day meet, and it becomes apparent that the series of events that leads to WW2 was incontrovertibly set in place when a soldier went AWOL during the Herero Wars, and so I completely agree with the Rocket either acquiring or representing free will but don't see events as disjointed, but rather chillingly connected.

>> No.6011284

>>6000081
Hey … lemme try my hand at this.

How about …

>The Awesome Arc?

Ho. That's a good one.

>The Big Bomb??

!!! I amaze myself

>The Cunts' Crusade

Not that good.

>The Dynamite Dick

THAT'S HANDSDOWN THE BEST ONE

>> No.6011439

>>6010286
if someone is destroyed by a rocket or anything else apparently random, how is that not their destiny?

>> No.6011474

>>6009889
The first two pages are a dream Pirate is having before he wakes up.